Fumes
by Chocolate Orchids
Summary: It had to be the fumes, she thought with the smallest of sighs. There was no other reason for Sherlock bloody Holmes to be acting like that. Sherlolly oneshot.


**Hello all, and happy Sherlock Day!**

**(For those of you that are confused like I was when a friend of mine told me, it's 2.21.13. Take away the dots? 221 13 and the 13 might as well be a B. 221 B, today and today only. This won't come again for a century, readers!)**

**So, because I couldn't write anything new in the time I had from after class to when I have to go to sleep, I decided to post this thing I wrote a while back, right after I finished watching the series. It isn't fantastic, but I think it's acceptable. Please read and review!**

* * *

Molly glanced over to the desk in the far right of the room for the seventh time that evening. She was fairly sure that the dark man melting a variety of body parts – she really hoped that they weren't from the woman waiting to be picked up for burial the next day – in some type of acid wouldn't notice. He was so engrossed in watching that… ugh, finger, disintegrate while writing down his observations that she could afford to sneak a few peeks at him. He had been putrefying the appendages for hours, and though she had begun to wonder where he was getting all of the fingers, she was almost giddy with his presence.

It had been almost a full year since Sherlock's stinted death. After she had assisted him passing off the fall as a suicide and then replacing his body with an old one at the morgue, he had disappeared for seven months. Then, after reappearing and moving back in with John, reestablishing their friendship and mutual trust, he hadn't shown up at her lab for yet another month. For the last two months, he had come more and more frequently, each time with a new experiment and in need of fresh body parts.

And, like a good little enabler, she had complied all-too readily.

She hadn't given him another human head, though. She had gotten into serious trouble for that one the last time, and so she had decided to draw the line above the collarbone. But she would break the rule at least every other time that he came in, giving him the occasional eyeball or ear as a coming-back gift. Well, she told herself it was a coming-back gift. It was more of a _come_-back gift, in her unfortunate mindset of 'please come back soon, even if you're going to tell me how to do my job… again'.

She glanced over to the corpse in front of her. What was she supposed to be doing? Images flashed through her mind of the police report. Autopsy. Suspicious murder/homicide thingie. Sherlock would undoubtedly tell her exactly what happened as soon as he was done melting those fingers, but she still had to do her work in case he forgot to be insufferable for once. Was he the one who was stabbed or the one who was stabbed or shot, she wondered. Pulling back the sheet covering the body, she looked at the wound in the man's chest. Shot. Excellent; shootings bored Sherlock, making him less likely to want to impart his seemingly infinite knowledge onto her.

Forgetting that she was supposed to be working yet again, her focus flicked to his back. That made eight times. She was really getting desperate, she thought sullenly to herself. If she kept looking up, he would eventually notice and be a total pompous know-it-all about it for hours, telling her exactly what she was thinking.

Heaven help her if he could decipher the thoughts that raced through her mind when he started using his riding crop to test God-knows-what on the fresher corpses.

But now, the majority of her thoughts were centered on the belief that she really should have something better to do on a Friday night than open up the lab for Sherlock on his every desire. Shouldn't she have plans? Well, she _had_ plans, but they _had_ fallen through. Like all her plans, it seemed. At least she had a nice view while she muddled through her work this way.

Before she got to her autopsy, her brown eyes flashed up once more, absorbing the consulting detective's visage one last time before turning to the dead man on the slate, ready to get back to her cadaver.

* * *

Nine times.

Sherlock noted it, feeling her eyes on his back as he scribbled down a brief observation on his liquefying finger in a half-full notebook. It was the ninth time Molly had glanced at him that evening. He usually found it annoying, but for reasons unknown to him, it wasn't irritating him as much as usual. Carefully, he plopped another severed finger into his fuming nitric acid. He found himself uninterested in timing its dissolution, though. Why was he even doing this experiment, he half wondered as he went through the monotonous motions of recording the results. Oh, right; that serial killer that was using acid the week before. He wanted to test… what was it again?

Well, whatever it was, he officially decided that it was boring.

For the first time that evening he looked up from his work, strikingly light teal eyes shifting around the room. They fell on Molly, her back to him and her hair falling out of the side-ponytail that he had once complimented for access to a corpse. Though the remark was used mainly for his own purposes, he had to admit that there was some truth to it. It framed her face nicely, drawing attention away from her small lips.

Well, they weren't that small, but she would look nicer if they were slightly more proportionate to the rest of her face.

Her lipstick helped as well, as he noticed on entry scant hours before. A ruddy red shade, romantic in nature, paired with the skirt and blouse she wore under her lab coat implied that she had romantic plans that evening, but her readiness to open the lab up on a whim suggested she wasn't going anywhere. Not to mention the fact that she had stayed with him to work into the small hours of the morning. But her expression would have been far more… upset, if her date had outright _cancelled_. So he had decided that her date - for an uptown restaurant, probably on the fancier end of the spectrum judging on her clothes - had called last minute, most likely with the excuse of having a meeting to make himself seem more successful and appealing and rescheduling for a day or two in the future. By looking at Molly's track record alone, he could tell that it was a blatant lie, but he had decided to wait until he was finished to tell her. Last time he mentioned her then-current boyfriend's lack of actual interest in her, she nearly kicked him out of her lab for a month.

_Fool_, he thought to himself about whatever boyfriend she had acquired. Though he insulted her often – and usually unintentionally – he would always know that Molly had, at the very least, intellectual appeal. She could also make herself look very nice when she wanted too.

Like tonight, for example.

She seemed to have pulled out all of the stops for her date, whoever the idiotic bastard might be. New shoes, as proven by the undented padding on the sandal-like pumps, surprisingly well-applied makeup, a heavier perfume than her usual citrus. As John would say, she looked 'hot and ready'. Serious relationship, Sherlock decided, his eyes still resting on her back. Probably been dating for a few weeks, perhaps a few months.

And, considering that it was Ladies Night at nearly ever bar in town, her boyfriend was either uninterested or cheating on her, though she believed in his lies wholeheartedly.

Sherlock dipped another one of his acquired digits into the acid, though he was finding that he was losing even more interest in the experiment. Profiling Molly was much more interesting, though she'd have her own ideas on that if she noticed. He looked over at her again, though. Her face was slightly turned as she examined the corpse. He was shot, Sherlock noticed. How mindlessly simplistic. If they just _had_ to kill someone, why not make it interesting? Her hands, delicate and covered in the expensive clear nail polish that she reserved for special occasions, traced over the body, probably checking for abnormalities. She jotted down observations quickly before using one of her many instruments to take quick measurements. A thought hit him like a sledgehammer, something that he had neglected to realize before.

She was excellent at her job.

It was surprisingly obvious to him now; she had to be a fantastic mortician to be able to smuggle him a human head and not get fired. Sherlock immediately felt a wave of regret for getting her into trouble wash over him.

Wait… something wasn't right.

He scribbled down another note in his journal, deciding that the isolated incident didn't mean anything. After all, she was just his, well, Molly. A flesh-dispenser and what he loosely considered to be a friend. Actually, as he thought about it, she was one of his closest friends. She had already proven herself to be willing to put almost anything on the line for his safety, and he found himself almost… reciprocating, those feelings. In fact, the thought that her new boyfriend was so obviously neglecting her was making him feel close to sick, or at the very least, very displeased.

He had only experienced this feeling before when John had seen him for the first time after his return. He had felt this god awful _sentiment_ then, and it seemed that it was back again to torture him.

Dammit.

Why was he thinking like this, he wondered with a slight start. It was the way an average person would think, the way John would think. Ugh, it was the way _Anderson_ must think. He glanced down at his work. Ah, that was it. Nitric acid produced fumes. The fumes were messing with his mind. Perfectly reasonable.

The part of him that was fairly sure it was a lie was rather proud that he could come up with such a suitable explanation.

He closed his eyes and tried to delete the thoughts from his mental hard drive. Yet, they wouldn't leave his head. With them came a rush of excitement, like when Lestrande would come to him with a new case and no leads. But, as he experienced the rush that he ached for, he also began to feel afraid. Had he lost control of his mind at last? He was always able to perfectly control his thoughts, like he was able to control his body or expressions. If he had lost his mind, what would that mean?

No, it wasn't him losing his mind, he reasoned with himself. It was the fumes. Just the fumes.

He believed it a little bit less with every repetition.

* * *

Molly sighed as she finished writing out the report. Though she was usually silent while working – Sherlock insisted upon it, and though it was her lab, she was too much of a push-over towards him to say anything – it was an occasion that deserved a sigh. It was close to one in the morning, and she was studying a corpse with a walking polygraph that just happened to be melting flesh in the corner.

"It wasn't a murder," Sherlock said from directly behind her. She jumped, letting out an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak. Composing herself and smoothing down her coat, she turned towards him. He had moved beside her and was examining the corpse, his eyes darting over the body.

"Come again?" she asked, looking over at him. Her voice was still annoyingly high. Damn.

"This man wasn't murdered," he repeated, the smallest twinge of a smile on the corner of his mouth. "Suicide, made to look like a murder. Oh, clever bastard! Fantastic, absolutely fantastic."

"Sherlock, I'm fairly sure he was-"

"He shot _himself_, can't you see it? The angular trajectory of the bullet points upwards, looks like an angle of twenty-four degrees and slightly over to the right. He was also shot at point-blank range. If someone shot him, their arm would be fully extended, like this."

He pointed his arm straight out to demonstrate. Though Molly heard his rants often, she was still surprised by the sheer amount of words that he could fit into a single breath.

"Now, what if they were closer, Sherlock? No, still won't work. Human arm can't bend to get that specific angle while shooting a gun. Just can't. But a left-handed man shooting himself? Definitely. His boyfriend planned it out. Why would anyone kill themselves and make it look like a murder? Oh, wait and see. It's all the boyfriend's idea, actually-"

"Who said he was gay?" Molly asked, before remembering who she was talking to and stammering out, "He's married… the ring…"

"Honestly, can't you tell?" Sherlock asked, turning his gaze to her. "We've been through this before."

"Right. Yes. I remember," she said, not wanting to be reminded. "So, as you were saying…?"

"Of course. So, the boyfriend's idea. The boyfriend is a leech, and has been draining him of his money. How do I know? See the tan lines. He wore a watch, expensive, old design, too. Late nineteenth century, by the looks of it. But, you can see that the outline's tone has been evening out in some areas, but not in others. Just a new watch? No. This man is sentimental. Emotionally attached to the watch. Probably a family heirloom. So why'd he get a new one? He gave the old one to his boyfriend. Needs a new one so that he can know when to call his wife. Similar size and shape; she's also paranoid of him cheating. Now we get to the fun part. So, wife finds him with a man and she leaves him. You can tell by her ring on his pinkie – he kept it, making it sentimental – even though it's clear by the state of the outside that it was never cleaned. He falls into depression; he's an emotional and unstable man on a good day. He was a cutter in the past, you can see the scars. And his boyfriend's the level headed one. So, the boyfriend sees the opportunity and breaks up with him that day. The man kills himself in a fit of passion. The boyfriend returns a day later, disposes of the note, drops the gun back off at the wife's house – she's a gun-nut, paranoid, probably a collector considering he shot himself with an antique as one can tell if they look at the bullet wound – and then calls the police, claiming he hadn't seen him in a few days. Police make an inquiry, find the body, ask a few questions, and he says that he was going to have lunch – no, dinner, dinner better fits this man's personality – with his wife. She's in jail now; no alibi. Just that she was at home, asleep. That makes the boyfriend the primary heir for all of his possessions. Oh, and he thought he was in the clear! I can't wait until the police come to his door."

Molly just stared up at him.

"What?" he asked, glancing back over.

"That's…" she began, but trailed off. She would never get used to how much he could read into something from, well, nothing. "I… sorry… I just don't think there are any words for that."

"There are. John has managed to use every combination of them he could come up with, though he seems to prefer 'brilliant' when he runs out of others."

"Right," she said, looking at the body. "I guess that I should restart my report, then."

"Why would you have to guess?" he asked. She bit her lower lip and grabbed a new sheet of paper from the pile on the desk nearby.

"I take it you're finished with your… experiment, then?" she sighed out as she began writing.

"Indeed."

"Well, I have plans, and since you're done-" she began in a last-ditch effort to get out before he began deducing her thoughts. She was cut off midsentence, though.

"No you don't. Your date 'postponed', just a few minutes before I texted you. Not to mention that it's one in the morning."

"He didn't 'postpone', he's a lawyer and-"

"He was lying when he said he had trial that was running long."

_He knows,_ she thought. _Of course he knows_. She swallowed, knowing what was coming.

"He said he was a prosecutor, correct? Don't answer, I know I am. Prosecuting attorney sounds best, so of course he went with that. Which, considering my lack of evidence, might be true. Unlikely, but possibly. But the three London-based trials going on tonight ended around two, four, and six, respectively. Coincidentally, all three of the leading attorneys in those cases happen to be women. He smelt of perfume the last time you went on a date, didn't he, and used some sort of impossible excuse?" Sherlock asked, noting how her eyes widened in realization. "But you wouldn't accept the reality. Really, Molly, why do you always neglect critical information that could-"

"Stop!" The yell was a surprise to both of the people in the room. Sherlock looked at Molly skeptically. Her breathing was heavy, her hair falling out of her messy ponytail. "Just stop."

It was a whisper now. She could barely hear her own voice; hell, she was half-convinced that it wasn't her talking.

"Would you prefer that I let him lead you on?"

She was silent. She knew that Sherlock thought that he was doing her a kindness by telling her. It was his way of caring. But she didn't want to hear it. Not tonight.

"I see," He said softly, so quietly that she was almost sure that he hadn't spoken. His voice sounded coarse and almost alien when he said even quieter, "I apologize. I didn't intend to hurt you."

She glanced up slightly. Something was very, very wrong here. Who was this man and what had he done to Sherlock, because Sherlock didn't apologize. Well, he did occasionally, but it was always at an incident more… important, than this one. Insulting her string of loser-y boyfriends was typical behavior, and it usually took John's intervention to make him say that he was sorry. After a few seconds of shared silence and in an ironic turn of events, her inner-submissive took control of her mouth.

"I forgive you," she said in return. Would she ever not forgive him? _Probably not_, she decided. She crossed the 't' that he had ever-so-kindly pointed out and stood up, trying to keep herself composed, even though h could probably tell that she was on the verge of tears. "I should probably be getting home, though. Long day of work tomorrow and all…"

Tomorrow's a Saturday," he replied, albeit under his breath. "If you're going to try and lie to me, at least put some effort into it."

"I'm tired." It wasn't a lie. She _was_ tired. Tired of working, tired physically, tired of dating complete arseholes, and tired of the detective telling her about it.

"No, you're still upset," he stated. "But John has given me the impression that friends are honor-bound to assist each other. I can't stand by while someone treats you like that."

She glanced up at him with surprise. Not once had he referred to her as a 'friend' before. It didn't take the pain of having her boyfriend-of-three-months cheating on her away, but it helped.

But it didn't help half as much as the arm she felt gently pat her back a second later.

She remembered the Christmas party all those months ago when he had kissed her as a part of his apology. Was this like that, an' I'm-sorry' gesture? Her thoughts were cut short though, for John walked through the doors of the morgue. Sherlock moved away from her so quickly it almost made her wonder if he was ever beside her at all.

"Hello, Molly," John said with a smile. Though she was no Sherlock Holmes, she could tell from the smelly, splattered stain on his shirt that someone had dumped a drink on him. "Ready to go, Sherlock?"

"Yes, of course," Sherlock replied. He moved away from her, each footstep shattering her heart a bit further. "Goodbye, Molly."

"Bye," she returned. The two men walked out of the room, John sending her a friendly smile and a wave. As soon as the morgue door shut behind them, she let out a loud groan of frustration, tears leaking out through squeezed-shut eyes. She liked Harry, her boyfriend. He was cute and sweet, not dark and demeaning. He was smart, but not all-knowing. He noticed her, but he didn't recount how many sugars she used in her coffee that morning from the state of her cuticles or some similar nonsense.

And yet, she knew even during their relationship, she loved Sherlock so much more than him.

She moved towards the man's desk, cleaning up the mess that he made with acids and body parts. She always put his things away for him. He should really learn to clean up after himself, she thought sullenly. He made such a big mess everywhere, and relied on everyone else to fix it.

Like the mess he had been making with her heart.

She put away his nitric acid and turned her nose away from the fumes, storing it in the cabinet that she used specifically for his stuff. Acids, chemical compounds, rotting body parts that were in some sort of test he was conducting on biodegrading flesh, and the cigarette lighter he had left on accident once were all deposited in there. It only took her a minute to clean up after him, and she looked back to the clean desk with a small sense of regret. Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes' personal assistant.

Her life was just fantastic.

* * *

"So, how was your night?" John asked as the two of them walked up the stairs from the morgue and through the hospital.

"Different," Sherlock replied, not paying much attention to his best friend.

"I'd tell you about mine, but I guess you already know," John said with a gesture to his shirt and a laugh.

"Don't let that stop you," he said, though sarcastically. He wasn't going to listen anyways. John was sure to tell him at some point, so he wanted to get it out of the way. As the doctor began telling him about his escapades, Sherlock began revisiting the events of the night. Molly was cross with him, but that was usual after he told her about the faults of her boyfriends. If only she could pick someone suitable, he thought to himself. He wouldn't have to tell her if she bothered to find a man worth seeing.

But the notion of Molly seeing another man after this one, and after that one, and after that… it made him uneasy. If she got a life outside of the morgue, she wouldn't be able to open it up for him. Though he constantly exploited it for body parts, her crush on him was actually flattering – what would she think of him if it disappeared? Without her rose-colored glasses, he would just become an enigma, but not the good kind. Not to mention the fact that her new boyfriend might come down to the lab. He would be a distraction.

Sherlock immediately decided that he didn't want Molly to see anyone else after her imminent breakup. He didn't want to have to share her with someone else. He needed her undivided infatuation to do most of his experiments.

He wasn't going to share her. Ever. She was solely his. She had to be.

Sherlock halted as John opened up the doors of the university, a cool breeze blowing back his hair.

"Sherlock, are you-" John began.

"Quiet. I need quiet for a second. Please," he said, the closest to begging he would ever get. This was impossible. Completely impossible. He was Sherlock Holmes, not some fourteen-year-old schoolboy.

"Are you alright?" John asked, studying his friend's face. Sherlock looked almost sick, the way color was draining from his face. A second later, he appeared to snap out of it, though, and glanced over to John with a sort of resolve that he hadn't seen before.

"Quite. I believe I forgot my phone in the morgue, though. I'll be back up in a minute. Get a cab."

The man turned on his heel, walking briskly back down the hallway towards the staircase. John wondered briefly what had made his friend forget his coveted phone before he walked out of the building to hail a taxi back to their apartment.

* * *

Molly was putting the body back into the refrigerator when heard a familiar baritone behind her.

"Sorry to bother you again, but I forgot my phone," Sherlock said, standing in the doorway. She turned around, remembering not seeing his phone when she had cleaned his desk.

"I-I don't think you left it here," she replied. "It isn't on your desk."

"So there's hope for you yet," he said, and in three strides he had covered the distance between them. Before her mind could compute what was happening, a hand was on the small of her back, another tilting back her chin gently, and a pair of lips was pressed against her own. It took a second for it to compute; _Sherlock Holmes_ was kissing her. _Her._

She stood stock-still, shocked by his immediate presence. Another second passed before she returned his kiss, unsure of if she was dreaming. Did she get too big a whiff of the nitric acid? She noticed vaguely that his mouth was warm; ironic, since his personality could put an arctic winter to shame. She was too afraid of scaring him off to deepen the kiss, and anyways, the fact that he initiated the contact was good enough for her to squeal with glee.

He pulled away a second later, though he still held her tight against him. Molly turned a lighter pink than she thought a human being could as she looked into his teal eyes. She tried to form words, to ask him what the hell was going on, but found her mouth unable to move.

"Break up with him, Molly," he said, his breath tickling her nose. "Now."

Before she could nod in agreement, he had let go of her and was out the glass doors of the morgue and walking back up the stairs. She was still standing there for a few seconds, her heart racing but mind blank, before she managed to blink in surprise.

"Oh my God," she murmured to herself. "That happened. That really just happened."

Before she could get too excited, she shook her head at herself.

It's just the fumes, she thought with the smallest of sighs. It has to be; there's no other explanation for why Sherlock-bloody-Holmes would act like that.

She had never thought that nitric acid could be more practical.

* * *

Sherlock walked out of the building, his head light and mind slightly fuzzy.

"Did you get what you needed?" John asked, his hand waving in the street to hail a cab.

"Yes," Sherlock replied, the smallest smile tweaking his lips upwards. "I think I did."

_I should have known it wasn't the fumes._

* * *

**Again, please review! Love, chocolate, and a happy Sherlock Day to all!**


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